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March 21, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. LEE. Mr. President, we have had more discussion today on a number of topics. One of the topics that has commanded a lot of today's discussion is the bill that is now pending before the U.S. Senate, the SAVE America Act.
have been in the past. So I need to address each one of those points, particularly those that have not been refuted—or at least adequately refuted today—in connection with these debates. While it is difficult to know exactly where to begin, I am going to begin—before I refute these—just with a generalized statement up front that will facilitate my ability to refute.
bill—now, although some of these arguments have been mingled with truth, they are almost entirely false. They are built on lies. They are built on a blatant mischaracterization of the legislative text now pending before the Senate. They are based on a mischaracterization of the legal status quo and the effects of existing laws.
They are based on mischaracterizations of the Constitution. They are based on mischaracterizations of the individual motives of the lawmakers in this body—something that we are not supposed to call into question but that has been called into question on a number of occasions today.
remember that the whole purpose of the SAVE America Act is to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
do this through a two-step mechanism—one that focuses on requiring proof of citizenship at the time of voter registration and another that requires photo ID at the time and place of voting.
legislative project came into existence about 2\1/2\ years ago, was that Congressman Chip Roy and I—Congressman Roy comes from Texas—he and I were talking, and, having been informed by some experts in this area, we pieced together a number of features—legal, factual, historical developments—that have converged into one, producing a massive gap in our election security.
interpreted by the Supreme Court in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona as prohibiting the States from doing any followup to verify, confirm, or refute someone's citizenship.
today on the floor of the Senate—require that you be a U.S. citizen to vote in a Federal election, that doesn't enforce itself. In fact, that criminal prohibition against noncitizen voting in Federal elections has become more or less impossible to enforce because noncitizen voting is nearly impossible to detect under the status quo.
Because of the Supreme Court's ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona in 2013, the States can't ask for proof of citizenship for anyone who registers to vote at a DMV—through an NVRA form at a DMV while applying for a driver's license and simultaneously going through the process of registering to vote.
are applying for a driver's license is check one box saying: Yes, I would like to simultaneously register to vote.
fact, eligible to vote. That is the end of the inquiry, and there can be no more inquiry, and that is part of what is causing so much of a problem.
were a noncitizen—especially if you were an illegal immigrant—and that, too, has changed. We have now got 30 million-plus noncitizens in this country. We have 10- to 15 million illegal immigrants in this country, specifically illegal immigrants who arrived within that 4-year period between January 20, 2021—the day President Biden took office— and January 20, 2025—the day President Trump became President for the second time. This veritable flood of illegal immigration—a mass-scale border invasion invited by the Biden administration, contrary to our laws—brought these circumstances about.
noncitizens here generally, coupled with the fact that it is impossible for the State to ask for any type of proof of citizenship for someone registering to vote at a DMV through an NVRA-supplied form, you have a recipe for disaster that we have never had previously in this country.
All right. So as to the arguments, they are picking apart arguments with it. Now, these arguments, first of all, are themselves at odds with how the American people approach this. The American people understand that it is not that big of a deal—it is not the end of the world; it is certainly not Armageddon—to suggest that somebody ought to show who they are and that they have the right to do what they want to do, to establish that they are citizens when they register to vote, to establish on the day of voting at the polling location that they are the person indicated on the voter registration file. The American people overwhelmingly understand and accept the fact that this isn't that big of a deal. Sure, it might be an incremental burden for some, but it is not going to be a problem, and it is a problem that Americans are used to dealing with.
or to a hospital, you don't apply for a hunting license or a fishing license, you don't buy a gun, you don't go through TSA and travel—you don't do any of these things and much, much more without being able to prove who you are and that you have the right to do the thing you are about to do.
Bowl, and the Democratic National Convention. You cannot get into and participate in the Democratic National Convention unless you show up with voter ID and credentials.
What else is like that? Oh, yes, I know: the U.S. Senate. You cannot come to the U.S. Senate, you can't cast a vote in the U.S. Senate, you certainly can't make it into this Chamber without ID and without credentials establishing that you have the right to be here as a Senator, the right to vote as a Senator, to make laws as a Senator. Every one of us has had to go through this over and over again—not just when we vote or do any of the other things that I mentioned, but when we register as candidates, we have to show who we are and that we are eligible to run for the U.S. Senate, that we meet the constitutional requirements for service in the U.S. Senate. We have to show our ID again when we vote.
of us serving in this body have been—you still have to show up and produce an ID on a couple of different occasions. You have to show your ID and your birth certificate or a U.S. passport in order to establish your citizenship, just as you would with any other job.
the United States of America has to establish their citizenship. They have to do that by either showing a U.S. passport that establishes citizenship or, alternatively, a birth certificate and a photo ID.
any other private sector employee in America. But as Senators, we also have to show up with other documentation. In addition to showing that we are who we claim to be and that we are that person who claims to have been elected to the U.S. Senate in the most recent senatorial election, we also have to show up and have the benefit of an election certificate by our chief elections officer—the secretary of state or Lieutenant Governor in most States—to establish that we are eligible to participate here. So this is no different. And the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention as well. These are not unusual standards or requirements.
So let's get onto these arguments. Over and over and over again, we heard this from both the senior Senator from Rhode Island and from the junior Senator from Rhode Island, among others, over the last few days. We are being told this would bring about a massive campaign of voter disenfranchisement.
Let's remember what “disenfranchisement” means. In this context, it means you are taking people who can vote today and making it so that they can't vote tomorrow.
is just utterly false. There is not a scintilla of truth to this. You could try to breathe life into it by adding inference upon inference, taking different statements out of context; you would still be lying if you were making this argument because there is nothing about it that disenfranchises anyone.
(Mrs. BRITT assumed the Chair.)
disenfranchisement of actual U.S. citizens by those who are not citizens of our country, by those who—whether through mistake or, more likely, fraud—may register to vote notwithstanding the fact that they are not eligible to do this.
victimless crimes. We hear about this from the
Chamber this very day. They approach noncitizen voting as if it were such a minor thing not only in terms of the numbers, the frequency or infrequency with which it occurs, but also that even if it does happen, let's not worry about it.
When you focus obsessively on “easy to vote” to the exclusion of all other things, you are not just increasing marginally the risk of voter fraud—something that they claim doesn't exist and that we have invented into existence because of our own tendencies toward paranoid fantasy—but they are also ignoring the fact that when we allow that to happen, we are disenfranchising actual American citizens, because their vote matters less. Their vote can be canceled out entirely by 1 or more or 1,000 or more or 10,000 or more people who vote in the same jurisdiction who might not be eligible to do so.
So, yes, it matters. And this is not disenfranchisement. It is a little bit like saying you are excluding entire categories of people by requiring them to prove who they are when they start a job—something that we all have to do every time we start a job. And somehow, the American economy continues to function. Somehow, men, women, people of every race and combination of races imaginable in America do that every single day. Most of us do that many times in a single career—we start a new job, we prove who we are. When we go to the DMV, we have to prove who we are. When we get pulled over in our car, we prove who we are. Why is this any different?
They say: Well, it is a constitutionally protected right.
Darn right it is. And it is our job to make sure that is protected. But the fact that it is a constitutionally protected right in no way, shape, or form means that we have to make it easy to vote and screw the rest; let's let them cheat. That is not a rational conclusion—unless, of course, your objective is to facilitate noncitizen, fraudulent voting in our elections, to the disenfranchisement of actual American citizens who are there to vote.
Island, and we heard it multiple times not only from him but from the senior Senator from Rhode Island—that it requires a passport to vote under the SAVE America Act.
This is not just a lie; this is a damned lie because the plain black- and-white text of the bill makes it very clear that there are a zillion ways that you can prove your citizenship. Now, there are a couple of them that are easy, that are familiar, that roll off the tongue because we use them elsewhere—like, for example, providing a U.S. passport that establishes citizenship on its own and like showing up with a birth certificate and a government-issued photo ID. That will do it too. Those are the documents we use in the employment context under the I-9 form.
one. For example, there are certain types of driver's licenses. I don't mean REAL ID because there are a lot of REAL ID driver's licenses that are issued to citizens and noncitizens alike. That has become a point of confusion. There is a subcategory of REAL ID driver's licenses known as the enhanced driver's license issued by some States to some people that contain indicia on the face of the driver's license that will establish citizenship. There are, as I understand it, some Tribal identification papers that will also establish U.S. citizenship—not all of them, but some of them do. There are a handful of other things that will do that.
a single document in hand. If you don't have them—you can't find them, you lost them, your house burned down, whatever it is—you can show up and you can fill out an affidavit, a sworn affidavit, saying: I, Mike Lee, swear under penalty of perjury that I am a citizen of the United States and this is where I was born.
here are: I was a citizen as of the moment of my birth by virtue of the circumstances of my birth when I was born on June 4, 1971, in Mesa, AZ, to U.S. citizen parents.
If you are not a—and those are the basic facts. You outline the basic facts of how it is that you became a natural-born citizen—enough facts so that the State election official knows what to look for, knows where to look, and can confirm or refute the existence of your citizenship as a natural-born citizen. You shift the burden onto the State. It doesn't cost you a dime. It doesn't even have to take more than a few minutes to show up and provide that information. Now, some might say: Well, that, too, is a step. Well, yeah, there are a lot of steps in a lot of things, and it is what we do to make sure that the vote matters, to make sure that the vote isn't being just completely left open to fraud and manipulation.
with anything that makes it hard to cheat, you really are just inviting and—in fact, guaranteeing—fraud. You are guaranteeing effective disenfranchisement, nullification of U.S. citizen voting, and often facilitating foreign election interference—something that my Democratic colleagues claimed for years to be obsessively concerned about, and now, Nah, let's not worry about it. We just want to make it easy to vote.
vote. One of the reasons why they like to make this argument, as dishonest as that argument is, is because passports, of course, are something that not everybody has. Some Americans do, but some don't. Some don't travel enough for it to matter, and if and when they needed to travel outside the United States, they will get one. And it is expensive. It costs a couple hundred bucks to get a passport.
constituents get passports. Every one of us has had the experience, not just once or twice but often once or twice a day, where we get a call from a constituent saying: I am supposed to be boarding a plane. I am on my way to London or Yemen or Tokyo or wherever it is, and I can't find my passport or it has expired. And we walk them through the process of doing it.
and over and over again for the last 4 days in a row—that you have got to have a passport to register to vote under the SAVE America Act is because they like the fact that there is a cost associated with a passport, and they can use that to make one of the other spurious arguments, which is that this is a poll tax.
constitutional amendment, and, of course, this is not a poll tax because you needn't shell out a dime. A poll tax is something that you have to pay for in order to have the right to vote. This is not that— nothing like that.
All right. Next point. My colleagues continue to argue that every part of this is so fraught with peril, including the very basic elements of what, under this law, the States would need to do to coordinate with and share voter registration data with the relevant Federal Agencies, primarily those within the Department of Homeland Security who operate the already existing SAVE database so that this coordination can occur between State elections officials—those who maintain their voter rolls—and the Federal personnel who maintain this database.
sharing of data between State officials and Federal officials just to make sure that we don't have noncitizens voting is something that is going to happen, particularly with this many noncitizens in the country, the ease of going into a DMV and applying for a driver's license and simultaneously checking a box and signing your name to register to vote. Given how easy it has become to do that, it is an absolute certainty that
Now, some of them might be doing it deliberately. I suspect there are quite a few who might do it inadvertently. There may be language barriers involved. They may think they are supposed to check that box, and they will sign their name. They might not know entirely what they are doing or they might not have a complete understanding that whatever their immigration status is, it doesn't allow them to vote.
The point is this: It is a known fact that we have a lot of registered voters in this country who are noncitizens. Let's talk about how we know that.
growing number of States—that have begun a systematic review of their own voter registration files, and they have shared their voter registration file data with the individuals and Agencies within the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, DC, to figure out who is a citizen and who is not.
their voter files so far. My hat goes off to those who have done it. This is the responsible citizen thing to do, and they have gone through the process of figuring out how to correct the errors.
So some of them have found out that way. Others, as is the case, for example, with the State of Oklahoma—it is a general phenomenon that occurs all over the place, but in Oklahoma they have a law designed specifically for this situation.
happens through a random selection of names from voter registration files in the jurisdiction in which potential jurors are drawn, so nobody should be summoned for jury duty unless they are on a list of registered voters. And when registered voters show up for jury duty, with some regularity, they will stand up, and they will say: Hey, I am not a citizen, and I, therefore, cannot serve as a juror.
Now, there all kinds of reasons. I have seen this happen, as a lawyer, many times. People get summoned for jury duty, and some of them will look for excuses not to do it. And some are really good reasons, others less so.
You hear people joke about different ways they could avoid it. I have heard people joke about showing up and saying, you know: I believe in jury nullification; that the jury can do whatever it wants without regard to the law. It doesn't matter. It is all our choice. And some say that is a way to avoid it. I don't encourage that.
sitcom “30 Rock” years ago where I believe Liz Lemon, the main character of the show, showed up for jury duty while dressed as Princess Leia and with just as many indicators that she was really weird as possible, hoping that some of the lawyers would exclude her, perhaps using one of their peremptory challenges to get over it.
citizens when, in fact, they are citizens. So, in Oklahoma, in order to ferret this out, they passed a law that said: All right. If you show up for jury duty having been summoned to show up as a potential juror and you claim that you cannot serve because you are not a citizen, we are going to check. We are going to check to see if you are, in fact, a citizen because if you are not a citizen, you shouldn't have registered to vote, and that is one kind of a problem. We are going to need to remove you from the voter registration files.
just stated under penalty of perjury, in order to escape jury duty, that you are not a citizen when, in fact, you are. That is also a problem.
Look, it is much better—don't lie. If you really don't want to do it, show up dressed as Princess Leia or as Chewbacca or something like that. That is probably a better point. I don't recommend that either. Just do your duty as a citizen.
form of a formal law like Oklahoma or as is the case in Michigan, they have adopted a practice: When they assemble those names, they run them through, and inevitably they find a bunch of them were not citizens and then they can remove them.
of Columbia in which they openly admit that they register noncitizens to vote because in some local elections within those jurisdictions, they allow noncitizens to vote.
That is a terrible idea. I don't know why they would want to do that, but they do. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prohibits it in a State or local election, as long as there is nothing in State law or the applicable State constitution that prohibits it; therefore, they can do so, and some of them have—some of them do. Foolish as it is, they do it anyway.
Curiously, in those States, when U.S. Federal authorities have asked them to explain how it is that they deal with the problem of voter registration files consisting of people who are allowed to participate in certain local elections as noncitizens, how they prevent those same voters who are not citizens, but registered to vote, from casting votes with a normal ballot as for Federal offices like the U.S. House of Representatives or U.S. Senate, every time that question has been asked, they go silent. They won't say a thing, and then they refuse to cooperate.
on their own, just because they are good citizens—they have taken advantage of the SAVE database within the Department of Homeland Security. They have shared their data, usually having entered into a memorandum of understanding between the State and DHS beforehand.
And then they say: Hey, run the numbers. Show us where we have got people in there that we shouldn't have. To their great credit, they have done that.
called blue States. States with Democrat legislatures and/or Democrat Governors have been refusing to do that. And so they have no idea—or at least we have no idea—how many noncitizens might be registered to vote in those States.
So this is kind of a problem.
Island Senators. Boy, the Rhode Island Senators sure had a lot to say today. They just didn't have a lot of good things to say about the SAVE America Act—and by “good things,” I don't mean that they were criticizing it. I mean they were using really bad arguments that are not rooted in truth and that are made with either knowledge of their falsity or reckless disregard as to their truthfulness.
So this is where it gets interesting. They argue that we can't even trust the States—the States can't even trust the Department of Homeland Security or anyone in the Trump administration with that data that under the SAVE America Act they would be required to supply to the Department of Homeland Security for this review.
And we can't, why? Well, the argument—they use a lot more words to say it, but it basically boils down to three words: “Orange man bad.”
Now, that is not a good reason. That is a lame-ass argument to get to a very simple point. They are saying: We don't trust the U.S. Government with data because some of it contains personally identifying information.
Well, welcome to the U.S. Government. They know everything about us. There is no fact that they do not have on us, on every American citizen, like it or not.
legislation—to make sure that privacy is respected. But with or without that information being handed over by a State election official to the Department of Homeland Security for the sole purpose of ascertaining voter eligibility, it does nothing to maximize or to further protect the privacy of the American people, nor are my Democratic colleagues saying or even suggesting in any way, shape, or form that they want to undo all the thousands, if not millions, of other instances, areas in which they collect a whole lot of data, including a whole lot of personally identifying data on U.S. citizens.
ease and simplicity of protecting the privacy and the personal information of
individual U.S. citizens is far easier than it is in the context of the IRS or of the financial transactions or everything else that the U.S. Government keeps track of. So this strikes me as pretextual; and, of course, pretextual is a fancy word for it is a cheap excuse for the real reason.
Now, maybe we will get to a real reason in a minute. Let's just say that they are opposing this for a reason, but none of the reasons that they are offering pass muster—not one of them can withstand scrutiny.
So their argument that “Trump bad” equals no State should have to share its data, even where necessary in order to weed out fraud in Federal elections—that argument isn't good. That argument is basically saying that we don't want our States to have to do that because we are pretty sure that our States have registered a whole bunch of noncitizen voters, and we don't want to have to give them up.
(Mrs. MOODY assumed the Chair.)
in the Senate, my Democratic colleagues have been arguing that anyone whose name would likely trigger alarm bells through the processes established by the SAVE America Act warranting their removal based on their status as noncitizens—they said that anyone who would likely be removed from the voter registration files would be more likely to be a Democrat than a Republican and that would be bad for us. They literally said this.
Now, they are careful not to say “because they are noncitizens,” but that is the reason. That is the only reason you would be removed through this framework is if they are noncitizens.
disenfranchise people, it is going to take away their vote—well, yeah, if you are a noncitizen. But if you are not, it is not going to.
and in saying that Armageddon will be upon us if we require people to show up with a photo ID when they vote, to show that they are citizens when they register to vote, and that the States are going to share their data on their voter registration files with the Department of Homeland Security just to make sure that they are, in fact, not voting in U.S. elections as noncitizens—when they object that strongly to it, it makes you wonder why they are so upset. And I think the question answers itself. It speaks for itself when they freak out over something like this.
voter ID is required—or photo ID is required. In fact, in the last Congress, when President Biden was still in office and when the Democrats had the majority in this Chamber—we are talking just a little over a year ago—every Democrat in the Senate then joined in and supported legislation that contained a voter ID element. So the voter ID component of it, most of them have said they are OK with it.
consent at the motion of our friend and distinguished colleague, the junior Senator from Ohio, who has got probably more knowledge of how elections work and State election systems operate than any other Member of the House or Senate—past, present, or future—this guy is sort of the—he is the Einstein of election systems. So he offered that up, accepting at face value our Democratic colleagues' repeated insistence that they don't have a problem with voter ID requirements, and it still drew an objection. Now, it drew an objection that made no sense because the objection articulated had nothing to do with voter ID. At least that is how I heard it. So that was kind of an issue. All right.
Next argument: This one came specifically from the junior Senator from Rhode Island who, if I have this right, falsely claimed that the Supreme Court of the United States has said that it is unconstitutional to ask a registering voter for proof of citizenship. Now, if I misunderstood that, I hope and expect to be corrected, but I don't think I did. I think that was the argument. And if that was the argument, that argument is a lie. It is absolutely false. It is not only guilty of being false; it is innocent of being true.
Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona. It was wrongly decided, but it is conclusive nonetheless. The majority opinion reached this conclusion. It did not say it is unconstitutional to ask a registering voter for proof of citizenship—far from it. It said that based on the text of the 1993 NVRA, as passed by Congress, that the text, as a matter of statutory interpretation, preempts, prohibits any State using the NVRA form at a DMV from asking any driver's license applicant simultaneously registering to vote to also establish citizenship.
That is a statutory conclusion—one that we are free to change. It is not a constitutional mandate. It is far from a constitutional mandate. Now, if that is what my friend and colleague the distinguished junior Senator from Rhode Island meant to say, then he is just plain wrong. But by saying that, he is suggesting that we are powerless, absent a constitutional amendment, from requiring any registering voter to provide proof of citizenship, which would make no sense, by the way, I mean, given how many times you are required elsewhere in Federal law— to say nothing of State law but even just in Federal law—to establish who you are and that you are a U.S. citizen.
a new job. Every American has to do that or you can't start the job. You also have to do it when you apply for a passport. And there are related issues of proof that you have to do in many, many other circumstances. If you want to buy a firearm and you go into a federally licensed firearms dealer, you have to provide a photo ID. You then have to go through a background check. You have to show who you are.
To this the Democrats say: Oh, but this is a constitutionally protected right. You have a constitutionally protected right to vote. True. There are multiple provisions of the U.S. Constitution that in different ways protect your right to vote. Yes, it is constitutionally protected. So too are a whole lot of other things. So too is your right to travel, and yet your right to travel is not unqualified. If you want to travel in and out of the United States, then you are going to have to get a passport. If you want to travel between two States or even two cities through commercial air travel, you are, at a minimum, going to have to show a driver's license. Yet your right to travel is constitutionally protected; the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected, as is the right to vote.
that there are and can be no guardrails around that to make sure that you are a person who is allowed to exercise the constitutionally protected right in question. That never has been the case, and it never will be the case. You still don't escape the need to establish who you are and that you have that right.
from Rhode Island and the senior Senator from Rhode Island that this will somehow disenfranchise women. This has to be one of the dumbest arguments that I have ever heard, not just in connection with this bill, the SAVE America Act, but with any bill ever debated in the 15\1/ 2\ years I have been in the U.S. Senate. I find it utterly offensive to suggest that women just can't possibly be expected to get their stuff together enough to establish who they are and that they are citizens; or, as the argument goes, women who get married and change their name upon getting married are never ever going to be able to prove who they are after they change their name because, after all, their parents couldn't have known what their married name would be when they were born, so we just can't pass this law.
This is really, really dumb. I mean, first of all, we have a lot of women serving in the U.S. Senate, every one of whom had to prove their citizenship, had to establish their election certificate, and many of whom have been married and changed their name in connection with that. And it is not just the women of the U.S. Senate; it is all women anywhere. And I know a lot of women. I have five sisters. My wife also has five sisters. Between us, that is 10 sisters. That is a lot of sisters. Every
entitled to vote. This is not a problem. And they are all married, and they all have married names that were different than the name listed on their birth certificate. It is not a problem. It is not just my family that is like that. I would imagine that the Presiding Officer's family is the same way. Women are no less capable than men of establishing who they are and supplying the necessary documentation.
Now, of course, what they say is: But what if they did—what if they did get married and what if they could find all the other pieces of documentation—maybe their maiden name is still on their passport, if they have one. And their maiden name would obviously be used on their birth certificate. Well, that is not a problem either, for the same reason that it is not a problem if you don't have any documentation.
to save the State governments a whole lot of trouble under this bill. It makes it a lot easier for them if you just show up with the right documentation, which most people have. But if you don't, that is OK. We have made that OK too. You just have to do an attestation, a short paragraph outlining who you are, when and where you were born, how you became a citizen, whether you were a citizen as of the moment of your birth by virtue of the circumstances surrounding your birth, or whether you were naturalized, and, if so, when, where, and how.
It is not hard. You could write that out. Any American could write out that information in probably less than 2 minutes. I know I could. Whether or not it would be fully legible is a different question. I might need 3 minutes to make sure that my handwriting is neat enough to be read, and even then it is a jump ball. It is an open question, but I am pretty sure I would be OK.
language in the statute, in the bill. Page 12, line 22 and the text that follows from it makes very clear that if you are missing any of that documentation—let's say you are a married woman whose birth certificate and whose passport and whose other documentation uses only your maiden name and not your married name and you can't find your marriage certificate. By the way, if you can find it, that is conclusive proof of the name change. You don't have to worry about it at all.
everything else. Then you swear out a brief affidavit: I got married on July such and such of such and such a year. And I married so-and-so. His name is Jones. My maiden name was Smith, so I changed it from Smith to Jones.
You are done. That is it. From that moment forward, whether you are missing one document or all documents, you fill out the affidavit, you hand it over to the State election official. They will ask any follow- up questions they need, and from that moment forward, the burden is off your shoulders; the burden is shifted to the State authorities, whose job it is to confirm or refute your citizenship or lack thereof.
States, remember, have access to all kinds of information: birth certificates issued in that State. I believe many, if not most, if not all States, have reciprocal arrangements with other States where they can confirm or refute information on each other's databases about birth and death records and so forth. This is not hard. Yet they refuse to acknowledge that language. They just go on over and over again saying: You are going to disenfranchise women.
that when you raise bull-crap arguments over and over and over again, you are not taking the American people seriously, especially when you insult their intelligence and competence by saying that vast swaths of people—and I have heard everything under the book. You name it. I have heard it stated with regard to rural Americans as opposed to more urban Americans—or suburban Americans, people of certain ethnic or racial backgrounds, men, women, old people, young people. They try to otherize just about everybody imaginable and say that certain subgroups will somehow be disenfranchised, disadvantaged. This is all nonsense, and it all ignores the same central feature in the bill that makes this tremendously easy.
All right. The next argument that they both make: fees. You have to pay fees somehow to vote. This gets back to their poll tax argument. Utter lie built on paranoid fantasy, conceived in hell by the devil himself, to make these arguments over and over again to scare people. This really has to stop at some point or another.
and then they remember that many, if not most of them, at one point or another—including some in the last few days—have said they are OK with photo ID. And so they don't argue with that one too much. But at the same time, they don't own up to the fact that every Democrat in here in the last Congress was, I believe, a cosponsor of legislation that contained an ID requirement. Now, it was a little bit different than this one. The biggest difference was that it wasn't quite as tight, but there was a type of ID requirement in that bill. It is not that different.
citizen voters, that it would be citizens that really would have to worry and that this would end up resulting in the disenfranchisement of lots and lots of citizens.
couple of things. I had to listen carefully when he started to say this because I thought he was joking at first or I hoped I was misunderstanding him.
He started to theorize back to this point that “the orange man bad,” so none of this can happen. We hate Trump. We can't trust Trump or anybody in his administration. Therefore, we are going to just say that all of it is unacceptable.
administration might just willy-nilly cancel the voter registration files of anyone they felt like canceling. If somebody looked like they might not be a Trump voter or something bothered them about this or that person, they might just willy-nilly say: When in doubt, throw them out.
way that pained me to hear because it is so absurd. He said it is even something we should have to worry about, that the Trump administration could go in and just cancel all the voter registration files in an entire State.
This is nonsense.
they could get away with it—it is utterly at odds with the text of the legislation. Nothing in the legislation would allow them to do that under any circumstance, other than where, having received the data from the States, they run it through their database, and they identify people: These appear to be noncitizens.
Even at that point, they are not removed. The State then does its job of going back through, and if the State believes that the Federal authorities got it wrong, they can push back on that.
The U.S. Government under this regime wouldn't have the authority to just go in and say: He is gone. She is gone. Get rid of this file. Get rid of that file.
States, ultimately, to remove them. But it is a collaborative, iterative process. It is not one in which they could go in and just say, “This guy bothers me; get rid of him,” or cancel all the voter registrations in an entire State.
I mean, let's be realistic. That is not realistic, and it is absurd to argue because it is utterly false that this bill, if it were signed into law, would have that effect. It is just a lie.
OK. Next, the senior Senator from Rhode Island had a real doozy with this one. He said: You know—after doubting whether any of this occurs—let's not bicker and argue about who might be registered to vote as a noncitizen. It probably doesn't happen ever. If it does, it is only a little.
experienced what happens when there is a
close election and somebody wins by just a handful of votes. It is cold comfort to say: Well, there are only a few noncitizens fraudulently voting.
But separate and apart from that, he was saying: The best way that we can handle this is just enforce existing law.
Do you know how absurd that is? Do you know how sophomoric, shallow, simple-minded that is—not to mention how reckless and utterly dishonest that is?
Let's work that through for a minute. What does that mean, “enforce existing law”? This is like the candidates who run for existing office that say: Well, I know how I will balance the Federal budget. Just eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse.
Oh, gosh, we didn't think about that before.
The difficulty lies in identifying it. You have to be able to identify the waste, fraud, and abuse, which we should do a better job of doing that we do. It is one of the reasons why we have systems like DOGE and why we have things like rescissions packages. I wish we did them more often and more aggressively, but it is why we have them.
It is not as easy as just saying: Let's just do it.
It reminds me of a movie. There has been a remake of it that I don't think was as good. The original movie was called “Meatballs”—you know, the one that came out in the 1970s, I think. It stars Bill Murray.
were going up against Camp North Star. Camp North Star had a lot of almost professionally trained athletes. Bill Murray, the camp counselor character, just kept reminding people that they had their own coaches, their other personal masseuse on board. And they were really worried about going into the camp Olympics against the rival camp, a bunch of rich kids at Camp North Star—I think is what it was called.
Bill Murray looked at him and he said: Yes.
He got this very introspective look on his face, and he said: Try to jump very, very high.
That is kind of what happens when you hear someone say, “Oh, it is easy—waste, fraud, and abuse”; or “It is easy; let's just enforce existing law.”
So this was his argument. It was that we can just enforce existing law because existing law, including but not limited to laws codified in 18 U.S.C. 1015, prohibit noncitizens from voting in U.S. elections. So let's just enforce it.
That is the whole darn point. That is the whole reason why Chip Roy and I wrote the SAVE America Act in the first place. It is the whole reason we had to, because our existing laws, as interpreted and as implemented, make it impossible—impossible—to find out where this is happening.
States that, No. 1, refuse voluntarily to come forward and share their voter registration file data with DHS to run it through the SAVE database, which I think roughly half of the States, blue States in particular, are refusing to do.
openly, brazenly admit that they allow noncitizens to register to vote to participate in certain local elections, even though they are noncitizens.
allow—expressly allow—noncitizens to vote and then offer no explanation as to how they keep them separate from those who are able to participate in elections for Federal office, they expect us to just, oh, enforce the law.
Now, Rhode Island is a blue State. I will check to make sure, but I will bet $5—a lot of money where I come from—that Rhode Island is one of those States that defiantly refuses to share their voter registration data.
it impossible to enforce the law? It is unknown, and it is unknowable. This is like—I guess it is like the ancient Egyptians telling the children of Israel that they had to make bricks without straw.
ancient Egyptians weren't all that concerned about the working conditions, the health, or the pragmatics behind their slaves.
All right, one more movie quote while we are on the topic: “Shrek” is one of the great cinematic masterpieces of the last 40, 50 years; half-century—“Shrek.”
There is a character named Lord Farquaad. Lord Farquaad is not what you would call a nice guy. Lord Farquaad is a despot. He is a tyrant. He is a fascist, and he is talking to his soldiers as he is about to send them into battle.
an analogous attitude. I realize if we do nothing, if we do not pass the SAVE America Act, we could have thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of noncitizens currently registered to vote in this country who will end up voting in Federal elections, and in some instances might even decide the outcome of elections. But that is a sacrifice we are willing to make.
Why? It benefits them. That old Latin phrase, cui bono—who benefits? They do. They benefit from the status quo in which it is impossible to enforce existing law.
So, no, Mr. Senator from Rhode Island, don't talk to me about the fact that we don't need this because all we have to do is enforce the law.
It can't be done. You know that, and you are all too content with that. So knock it off.
Nothing in the law would authorize that. If somebody tried to do it, not only would they lose in court, but they would be fired from their job, and they might even be imprisoned.
They are entitled to their opinions. They are not entitled to their own facts. Those things they want us to accept as facts are just damned lies.
Utah, talking about how relatively clean Utah's voter registration rolls are—clean of noncitizens—great, yes.
Do you know why? My State is not one of those that refuses to clean up its voter registration files.
might have been registered to vote or whether they have been able to review all those. I don't know. I am not going speak to that.
had more incoming illegal immigrant traffic into the State than any other State in the Union, measured on a per capita basis.
registration files, there is no telling whether that is still the case today. There is no telling whether that could change between now and this November's election, especially when people figure out that, hey, no citizen, no problem. Just go into a DMV, fill out a form, check the box, sign your name, and, all of a sudden, you are a registered voter.
Next, federalism: This is one of my favorite arguments that they make, and they make it over and over and over again. Both Senators from Rhode Island made the federalism argument today.
U.S. Government is a government of limited powers. James Madison, in Federalist 45, described this government, the one we operate, the one for which we make laws, as a government with powers that Madison described as “few and defined.” And the powers reserved to the States are “numerous and indefinite.” Unlike the States, which are governments of general jurisdiction—they can
legislate on anything just because. Anything that is not prohibited to the States, either by the U.S. Constitution or by their State constitution, they can do it.
We are not the same. This government is not the same. We have to have a specific reason to legislate, a reason that falls within Congress' limited enumerated powers, most of which—not all of which—can be found in one part of the Constitution that too often goes overlooked, article I, section 8.
Constitution, including the one that is most relevant here, and that is the one found in article I, section 4, clause 1 of the Constitution, that gives us the authority to establish rules and regulations specific to the election of Federal officials, namely U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives.
first instance, that the States will conduct those elections. And that is true. It also says the States will establish the rules governing the “Time, Places, and Manner” of those elections. And that is true. But then it also says, in the very same sentence, that Congress may at any time impose its own rules and regulations, not regarding elections generally but specifically Federal elections—Federal elections for U.S. House and Senate races.
And so, we have that authority. That authority is being exercised here. There is not a single credible argument that the SAVE America Act falls outside that authority—not one.
And it is very amusing. I talked about this a little bit last night. It is amusing to me that my Democratic colleagues in the Senate are making a federalism argument claiming that our authority is too limited—so limited that we don't have the power to enact this.
I am surprised by that for two independent reasons. Reason No. 1: Generally speaking, they don't like federalism. They are not fans of it. Ever since at least the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration— arguably it goes back to the Woodrow Wilson administration—the Democratic Party has not been the champion of federalism, and that is really, really putting it mildly. It is a little bit like saying that Jack Daniels and Jim Beam are not fans of teetotalers or of the temperance movement.
and ever since April 12, 1937, they have had their way most of the time because most things they can now justify.
Franklin D. Roosevelt had Democratic supermajorities in both the House and the Senate. He bullied and intimidated the Supreme Court of the United States, which had been knocking down his legislative agenda, and threatened them right after his first reelection in the fall of 1936.
pushed through as part of his New Deal program—remember, the villain was the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt was going to be the hero, and his weapon of choice was going to be the New Deal programs dramatically increasing the size, scope, reach, and cost of the Federal Government, putting it in charge of all kinds of things. The Supreme Court, during his first term of office, kept knocking him down, one right after the other. You can't do that, can't do that, can't do that. And they were right.
commerce clause, which is there to give us authority to regulate things or persons moving in interstate commerce, across State lines, as part of interstate commercial transactions or instrumentalities or channels of interstate commerce, interstate airways, waterways, and so forth.
Whenever they tried to get too cute with it and say “Well, it goes beyond that”—anything that is sort of economic-ish and that involves money should do it—the Supreme Court kept knocking it down.
So what did Franklin Roosevelt do? I would imagine that he was one of these guys who probably played tee ball only as a little kid, never made it to baseball, and even when he was on tee ball, he was probably on one of those teams where they don't keep score because everyone is a winner. So he never learned how to lose like a gentleman. He got tired of losing and couldn't lose like a gentleman, couldn't accept the Constitution. So what did he do? He threatened to force the retirement of a bunch of the Supreme Court Justices whom he didn't like, whom he had named the “four horsemen of the apocalypse”—not exactly Mr. Congeniality here—and threatened to pass legislation entitling himself to pack the Supreme Court, to increase it up to a tribunal as big as like 15 people.
street about a year earlier—no, it was 2 years earlier to the day. The Supreme Court had always been sort of the anchor tenant of this building or the subtenant—redheaded stepchild, if you will.
for the first time. They had been in there only 2 years when this Court packing plan began in earnest because F.D.R. never learned how to lose like a gentleman and wasn't willing to accept the Constitution as the ultimate outcome. So he just threatened them. He threatened them to the point that enough of the Justices flipped their votes.
their marble palace—the Supreme Court of the United States rewrote the commerce clause giving Congress newfound power over basically everything. Not only could they regulate things or persons moving in interstate commerce, across interstate lines, as part of interstate commercial transactions, and things involving channels or instrumentalities of interstate commerce, but now they could also regulate anything and everything, any and every activity that, when measured in the aggregate while occurring in one State at one time, had a substantial effect on interstate commerce.
Yes, this is legalese. Yes, this is jargon for a very simple concept that just means Congress could now regulate whatever the hell it wants. Every aspect of human existence—labor, manufacturing, agriculture, mining, health, safety, and welfare—even occurring in one State at one time, was now on the table, was now Federal.
Democrats championed this the whole time. It was their Court packing plan that forced them to push that through.
So my point is this: It is ironic—one could say hypocritical and deeply so—for the party of unlimited Federal power that distorted the vertical protection of federalism and, with it, the horizontal protection of separation of powers—we have never retreated from that position, and as soon as we gave Congress the power to regulate anything and everything—that messed up the vertical protection of federalism—we started messing up the horizontal protection of separation of powers. Because no sooner had we as Senators and Congressmen gotten all this new power that we started saying: Holy crap. I am going to have to work a lot harder, and I am going to have to take a lot more votes that they are going to make a lot of people mad at me.
It goes something like this: We hereby declare as a Congress that we shall have fair labor standards and practices in this country, and we hereby delegate to the National Labor Relations Board the power to make, interpret, and enforce rules carrying the force of generally applicable Federal law that will guarantee fair labor standards.
They do that over and over and over again. This is what happens with their version of limited government.
So don't talk to me about federalism. This is an area where we actually have a very specific Federal power, and we have a very narrow, nonabusive, nonabusable grant of Federal power to the Federal Government from the Constitution itself. This is not a federalism problem—not by a mile.
That leads to the next argument closely related to that one. The senior Senator from Rhode Island—who was on a roll tonight; I will give him credit for that. The problem is that in an hour and a half, he failed to make even a single correct point without the use of abusing the English language, the law, the Constitution, and common sense. Other than that, it was a great speech.
clause 1 to the U.S. Congress to provide rules and regulations governing the election of Federal lawmakers, that is only for Congress. And you look at the SAVE America Act, and it gives responsibilities to executive branch Agencies.
Well, no crap, Sherlock. That is how we do everything. Everything that is delegated to Congress, all Federal powers—when there is a Federal grant of authority in the Constitution, with very few exceptions—like the Commander in Chief power that is given directly to the President, not through the Congress—when the Constitution, throughout article I, section 8—and the same would be true in article I, section 4, clause 4—when Congress is granted a power, it is understood that we make the law, but the execution and implementation of that law is given to someone else.
lawmaking power is handed in the first instance over to an executive branch Agency. That is different. And that, by the way, is why we need to pass the REINS Act after we are done passing the SAVE America Act. I know the Presiding Officer is a fan of that legislation, as am I. Because anytime we are making new law under article I, section 7 of the Constitution, you have to pass through this dual gauntlet of article I, section 7. You cannot make a Federal law—meaning you cannot make a rule enforceable by the overpowering, brooding, omnipresence of the U.S. Government—unless you have satisfied this two-part gauntlet: You have the bicameral passage—House and Senate, same text—followed by presentment to the President of the United States for signature, veto, or acquiescence.
So this is totally different than that. We are not outsourcing the lawmaking power; we are adopting a single visible, understandable, intelligible principle-based legal standard and then handing over to the Department of Homeland Security for the execution of that standard, which we have made with abundant clarity.
So the Senator from Rhode Island says: Ah, but it gives Congress the power to do this, not the Department of Homeland Security or any part of the executive branch of the U.S. Government.
This is just nonsense. I have never heard somebody make such an argument. It is wrong. We do have that power. That power doesn't evaporate simply because we ourselves don't implement it.
Do you know what is funny here? It would be unconstitutional for us to execute it. Why? Because we don't have the executive power. We have a narrow piece of executive power expressly given to us on our Executive Calendar. On our Executive Calendar, we handle the confirmation of Presidential nominees, and we handle treaty ratification, but that is it. That is the extent of our executive power.
ourselves in charge of executing that same law. That would put us in the position of the lawmakers in our mother country, who don't have separation of powers like we do. They are barbarians; that is why we left them. It is why we don't fly the Union Jack. It is why our dental care here is much better than it is there. It is why our food doesn't suck—because we left them a long time ago because we got tired of them and their hoity-toity butchering of the English language. But we got sick and tired of their lack of adequate separation of powers.
argument that, taken to its logical conclusion, would be unconstitutional.
All right. Mass purges. The senior Senator from Rhode Island, still engaging in his paroxysm of paranoid fantasy, theorizes that somehow the Trump administration—and I am trying to imagine the animated characters running around in his mind's eye as he is saying this. Like, who is it? Is it Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowski, Stephen Miller? I don't know who it is, but these very Trumpy members of the executive branch who are friends of the President are just going to come in and say: We cancel all of your votes. Mass purges. Let's do this just to be mean.
This is absolutely insane. That is not at all—there is nothing in the bill that would allow a mass purge of U.S. citizen lawful voters, and it is never ever going to happen.
Island made shortly after making the argument I just refuted where he said there are zero dollars appropriated for them under this legislation. That is true.
could make the bill better by adding an appropriation, well, we can talk about that. I don't believe that is necessary. The reason I don't believe it is necessary is that we already have several legal regimes, several statutory frameworks through which there are Federal dollars already allocated to the States for their role in carrying out these responsibilities under laws like the NVRA and under laws like the Help America Vote Act. Now, if those are inadequate, which I don't think they are, but if they are, then let's have that conversation.
senior Senator from Rhode Island, I have to get back to the federalism argument. I left out a key point of it.
federalism as they are into kosher delis in Tehran—in addition to that, they themselves pushed a bill ironically called the For the People Act in the 117th Congress.
exactly noon on January 3, 2023, when the Democrats held the majorities in the House and the Senate and also held the White House.
to be drawing its authority from article I, section 4, clause 1. Now, not only were there lots, lots, and lots of executive branch Agencies— like multiple executive branch Agencies and Departments—that were going to be empowered under that, thus eviscerating his own argument, but not one of them expressed a single reservation about that. In fact, every single Senate Democrat here at the time was fully supportive of the SAVE America Act. Not one of them ever, ever suggested they didn't have authority to do that.
This article 1, section 4, clause 1 is a thing. Ironically—and we don't need to go too deep into this, but they actually pushed the envelope of article 1, section 4, clause 1 so far that I don't think that could have been upheld as constitutional. I mean, they trampled on all sorts of State sovereign authority matters that went far beyond the realm of just Federal elections. They would have subjected every voting jurisdiction in the United States—it would have rendered every voting jurisdiction in the United States a preclearance jurisdiction. Whether you had ever had a history of racial discrimination or not, if you wanted to change your voting precincts, your legislative district maps, whatever it was, you would have to go and seek a “Mother May I” from a political appointee in the Democratic Party at the Department of Justice. It is wildly unconstitutional. They would have changed all kinds of things like voter registration deadlines. It actually strips the State legislatures of their constitutionally derived power to draw congressional district boundaries. So, for them to argue federalism here, give me the biggest break. This makes absolutely no sense.
about election security; it is about disenfranchisement. It is really cheap. It is a really low argument, especially because there is not a single word, not a single syllable, not a single letter in the bill that can justify that. I know that my friend and colleague from Rhode Island must not mean that. I don't know who wrote that speech for him or who told him he had to say that or whether he did it himself. Look, we are all entitled to a mulligan once in a while, and I will give him one here, but that is a doozy. There is literally no truth to it, and that is the hard part about arguments that have zero truth to them. It is that, when they have as little truth to it as that argument, it is
kind of hard to refute it. You have to build it up in order to knock it down, and that is hard too.
is where I am reminded of the limitations of my own handwriting. I can't read that one, so I am going to step forward to the next argument.
senior Senator from Rhode Island—this being Rhode Island day with the SAVE America Act—they both kept relying back on the fact that it is already illegal. Yes, it is. It is already illegal for a noncitizen to vote, but the fact that something is already illegal doesn't mean that it is self-executing, that it is self-implementing, that it is self- revealing. It is none of those things. Some things are; some things are not.
or the day before. Somebody said—they compared it to laws governing the running of a stop sign. One of our Democrat colleagues said the other day, in a way that reminded me of what the two Senators from Rhode Island argued today, is that you don't have a law prohibiting people from running a stop sign at an intersection and then say: We now need another law prohibiting the running of a stop sign in a stop sign controlled intersection. They missed the whole point altogether.
would be to say, if you had a law prohibiting the running of a stop sign and then you had another law or maybe the same law was interpreted oddly by some creatively thinking judges as prohibiting the police from monitoring or watching intersections guarded by a stop sign, then, yes, that would be a fair analogy, and, yes, then we would need another law saying: No, it is not illegal for the cops to watch that intersection.
instance where you have got to prove who you are. I don't personally drink alcohol, but I know, nonetheless, the way this works is that whether you are a young person or an old, bald person like me, if you go into a liquor store or any other place where alcoholic beverages are sold, you are going to get carded. I know some people profess to being very flattered when they get carded because it makes them feel young when they do that, but my understanding is that you pretty much always have to show your ID when you go in there. They are just not going to take any ifs, ands, or buts. You have to show your ID.
This is the same kind of comparison. If we didn't have that law that you had to show your ID when you bought alcohol, then it would be impossible not only to enforce but even to detect violations of laws saying that liquor stores can't sell booze to kids. That is why we have the ID requirement. You have got to establish who you are. Then there are some recordkeeping obligations that go along with that.
enough to say: It is already illegal. Back to our point earlier of: Oh, I know how we are going to save money. We are just going to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. Great. You can't just say: We are going to do this.
there is a grave risk that, by not enforcing those laws, you will cheapen the rule of law itself, not just the law that is being broken but the dynamic in which we as citizens, in a free Republic, choose voluntarily—most of us, mercifully—to abide by the law. We try to keep the law, and things work better when they do. When people break the law, there are generally consequences. When you live in an environment where the law is just disregarded and cast aside, bad things happen, but it gets infinitely worse—infinitely worse— whenever, wherever. You not only say: We are going to just disregard it, but you put legal restrictions, legal impediments, in place so as to make it impossible not just to prosecute but even to detect where the laws are happening. Then, on top of that, it gets exponentially worse beyond that.
determines who is going to make our other laws. This is upstream from everything else. It impacts the legitimacy of this government. It is what is standing between us and untold amounts of not just election fraud but foreign election interference. So we can't pretend that this is academic, that this is a frivolous concern.
this is about President Trump and his administration wanting to just go in and disenfranchise an entire gender or an entire race or an entire political ideology or a set of party affiliations. Nothing in this law would authorize that. There would be hell to pay if anybody tried for it, and it is absurd to suggest that it is going to happen.
with saying our elections will be fair and free of fraud when we have had 30 million people living in this country who are not citizens, about 15 million of whom entered the country unlawfully just in 4 of the last 5 years under the open border policies of the Biden administration, where we have got a law that allows anyone, even a noncitizen, to apply in most States—the overwhelming majority of States—just by going into a DMV, checking a box saying, “I want to register to vote,” and signing their name, saying, “Don't worry about it. I am a citizen, and I am otherwise entitled to vote.” When we tell our own fellow citizens that not only are we not going to enforce that law but that we are going to continue to make it impossible to detect and prosecute and punish violations of that law, heaven help us all.
that subgroup or demographic. This is about one thing; it is about citizenship. Yes, it is already against the law. So let's act like it. Let's allow for the law to be enforced. If we did the same thing with our drug laws, everybody would be taking drugs. It is almost like encouraging people to take drugs if you do it that way. But this is even worse than if you let our drug laws be unenforced, because this one determines who makes the laws. This one determines the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of our government. This, in effect, will disenfranchise Americans who will have their votes diluted and canceled out if we allow persons who are not citizens to vote.
We can get this done, and we will get this done. I was here yesterday and the day before that and the day before that and the day before that and the day before that, and I will be here every day until this is passed. I will not stop, and I know the Presiding Officer won't stop either. We are going to stay on this legislation. We will continue to debate. We will debate in the rain on a train, in a box with a fox— anywhere, everywhere. We will debate this thing, and we will make them speak until they are tired. We will make them speak until every one of their arguments, frivolous or legitimate—I have yet to hear any of the latter, but you know, it could happen—have all been exhausted, and then we will win.
At some point, we will move away from the frivolity. At some point, we will stop making arguments rooted in science fiction, paranoid fantasy and move on to what the bill actually says. That is what happens when we are exhausted. That is what happens when people have to actually stand and speak and articulate their concerns with the bill. Sooner or later, you start being able to separate fact from fiction, from paranoid fantasy. And, at that point, that is where the magic happens. We can start to look for where the real points of contact are. If there are amendments to make to this thing, let's make them. Let's make it work as well as possible, but let's get it done. We are not going to quit.
We have promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep. We will not sleep until this is done.
I yield the floor.